Friday, May 31, 2013

Recall this post about how Monsanto got the US Congress to pass legislation to protect it from prosecution. Here's something you can do about it. I've copied the following from a Daily Kos email:

Please join Daily Kos and CREDO to demand that the U.S. Senate repeal the Monsanto Protection Act, one of the most outrageous special interest provisions in years. Click here to sign.

The Monsanto Protection Act allows Monsanto and other large corporations
to ignore existing food safety rules, and continue selling genetically
modified seeds even if a court has blocked them from doing so. And it
was slipped in last March anonymously without review or debate.

Now we have an opportunity to repeal it, but we need your help. Powerful
interests snuck this provision into the budget and rammed it through
Congress, unbeknownst to many. Repealing this act will take a major
grassroots effort to pressure the Senate.

Krugman isn't fucking around here with metaphors; this is actually what the regressives are doing: Taking food away from needy children. And he says we should get damned mad about it and he's right about that too. This is heinous and inhuman. Their latest legislation will kick off 2 million people from the food stamps program! Why? Because we cannot afford it? Bullshit. See the linked Reich video from a previous post.And no, this isn't just bitching about asshole regressives but a call to get active with your politicians and grassroots orgs to put as much pressure as possible to keep from cutting the food stamps program and get the money from where we have plenty, the rich and corporations. So they have to perhaps eat 1 ounce less caviar per day. That is better than starving our children, don't you think?

His recent blog post "between us" leaves me dismayed at his continual misrepresentation of so-called
liberal political policy. His philosophical analysis is astute enough on how conservatives fail to take into account a systemic approach, thereby blaming the individual for his problems. But he thinks liberals are guilty of the same problem, just blaming the greedy corporatists with the hope that if we just shame them that they'll mend their ways. Whereas the problem lies in the systemic structural ecology, in this case the capitalist system.

"But something sinister lurks beneath the surface of Whole Foods'
progressive image. Somehow, Mackey has managed to achieve
multimillionaire status while his employees' hourly wages have remained
in the $8 to $13 range for two decades. With an annual turnover rate of
25 percent, the vast majority of workers last no more than four years
and thus rarely manage to achieve anything approaching seniority and the
higher wages that would accompany it. If Whole Foods' workers are
younger than the competitions, that is the intention."

"Indeed, Mackey is no progressive, but rather a self-described
libertarian in the tradition of the Cato Institute. He combines this
with a strong dose of paternalism toward the company's employees."

"This over-the-top adulation of the private sector, which pervades the
book, might be tolerated by readers seeking the secrets of his company's
success.... But those looking for rigorous analysis and informed inspiration
will be disappointed....the book falls prey to the same fatal flaw of other
business books and CEO treatises: namely, promotion of an oversimplified
framework that ignores the complexities of the real world."

"Mackey provoked an SEC investigation in 2007 by posting
comments about Wild Oats (which Whole Foods was taking over) on a Yahoo!
Finance board under an alias that was an anagram of his wife's name; and inspired protests after criticizing President Obama's
healthcare proposals in a Wall Street Journalop-ed. More recently, he was forced to retract his use of the word 'facism' on NPR to describe
the new healthcare law."

"Over the past several weeks, I have heard John Mackey promote his book
Conscious Capitalism and have come to the conclusion that it might
have been more appropriately titled Unconscious Capitalism. I say this
because in his various interviews, he managed to re-iterate a position he has
taken previously, that Obamacare is somehow a form of 'fascism,' and that
climate change is not of real concern and might actually be good in some
places."

"It has been on a mission to establish a national chain of organic food
'supermarkets.' It has accomplished this goal with a policy of buying out or
forcing out its competition. Its employees are treated pretty much the same as
Wal-Mart -- starting them close to minimum wage, being stingy about benefits,
and fighting any attempt to have the workers unionize. Worker turnover is very
high. Unlike Walmart, which has ruthlessly cut prices and forced its vendors to
cut profits to razor-thin margins, Whole Foods has taken the opposite strategy
-- wiping out competition and then charging as much as it can."

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Yes, Forbes, not some liberal media outlet, has this to say about why Costco is doing so much better than Walmart. Costco's sales growth is 8% compared to Wallmart's 1.2%. Why?

"Here’s a crazy thought—might it have something to do with the fact that
Costco pays nearly all of its employees a decent living (well in excess
of the minimum wage) while Wal-Mart continues to pay its workers as if
their employees don’t actually need to eat more than once a week, live
in an enclosed space and, on occasion, take their kids to see a doctor?"

So how does Walmart respond? By cutting its employment roster by another 1.4%. And the service there sucks too. Why? The wages are so low that workers aren't motivated to give a shit about the company. Meanwhile Costco's employees get paid a living wage and their stores are far more efficient with better rated service.

House Budget Committee chairman Rep. Paul
Ryan has released a budget proposal that is the most reckless austerity
plan he’s ever proposed. Instead of a budget that will slow the economy
and kill jobs, vote for the Progressive Caucus' Back to Work Budget,
which will grow the economy, create 7 million jobs and asks the wealthy
and the multinationals to pay their fair share so we can make
investments vital to our future.

Petition Background

Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, the House Budget Committee chairman, has
released his most extreme budget proposal yet. It will slash vital
services, dismember Medicare and repeal Obamacare. It will slow the
economy and put 2 million people out of work. The House should instead
vote for the Progressive Caucus Back to Work budget. It would create 7
million jobs in the next year, putting people back to work so that they
start earning incomes and paying taxes. It protects Social Security and
Medicare benefits for everyone. And it asks the wealthy and the
multinationals to pay their fair share so we can make investments vital
to our future – modernizing our infrastructure, educating our children,
grabbing a lead in the green industrial revolution.

At IPS Balder posted two evocative pieces, one by Latour and one on Monsanto. Latour is addressing climate change, and a common choice between denial or accepting it but doing nothing. And in the other the Russian President delayed meeting the US Secretary of State because of US policy to allow Monsanto to continue selling its proven bee-killing bioengineered chemicals. Which chemicals the EU has agreed to ban.

I take both of these to heart, but I cannot do nothing. Hence my ferocious written attacks on those
perpetuating these crimes. I realize it's not much coming from a small
voice, but it is not nothing. So I keep trying to get others to speak
up, for when we get enough small voices together we become like a hive
of bees and make a grand and frightening buzz that just might initiate
some action. As I said before, this is war and we must fight like our
lives depend on it. For they really do.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

At least according to PolitiFact. Since January they rated 52% of Republican statements as mostly or entirely false compared to 24% of Democrat statements. In the first 3 weeks of May that rating was 60% GOP to 29% Dem. That regressives lie more comes as no surprise. But the Dems, while not as bad, aren't that great either. I just wonder what % of the Dems' lies came from the Congressional Progressive Caucus? Also see the study by The Center for Media and Public Affairs, which gives more facts.

You remember Dole, former Senate majority leader and Presidential candidate? He was interviewed on Fox News Sunday and said that Senate Republicans are abusing the filibuster, and that neither he nor Reagan nor Nixon could make it in today's GOP. The party no longer has any positive ideas and should "close for repairs" until it comes up with some.

Monday, May 27, 2013

He does it again with a sensible way to regain leverage against greedy corporations that could give a shit about what their practices do to the economy as a whole. If they want to move their money to other countries that have a lower tax rate then don't allow them to sell their products in the US. If the US and the EU did this then the greedy bastards would lose their major markets and dry up.

Reich is well aware that such a move would face an enormous onslaught of money to legislators to prevent it, making it all the more difficult to achieve. But if we're willing to fight for it we just might have a chance. And the thing is, if the corporations submit to paying their fare share of taxes for access to our market, thereby stimulating the economy overall, more people buy their products and they still make a gazillion dollars. Maybe it will be a bit less due to higher and more reasonable tax rates, but they'll still be bloody rich beyond imagination.

Here's a recent
Latour article on how he came to write his new book. Like
kennilingus each mode has its own truth claims and procedures. Also
within each mode there is a constant process of reworking, a
development.

I also appreciated his differentiating between the complicated
and the complex (11), reminiscent of this
post. On 12-13 it seems his early notions in Irreductions
are now recognized as but one of the modes, not a unifying
principle. And this comment thereon:

"Like all modes it tends toward hegemony and tends to
misunderstand the others."

Perhaps most interesting, in the beginning and end he sees his
current project as a P2P endeavor, asking us--yes, each of us--to
participate in creating this new knowledge. What a revolution in
thinking from the "I created that line of investigation and it
is my intellectual property, so pay up or get lost."

Still no hint yet though on the 2 supposed integrating modes to
tie the others together.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

I’ve cited this article before but it’s relevant here as well: “We are live creatures” by Johnson and Roher (in Body, Language and Mind). A couple of excerpts with commentary to follow:

The patterns of human-environment interaction are described as “image schemas that ground meaning in our embodiment and yet are not internal representations of an external reality. This leads to an account of an emergent rationality that is embodied, social and creative” (21) (my bolding).

“The fundamental assumption of the Pragmatists’ naturalistic approach
is that everything we attribute to ‘mind’…has emerged (and continues to
develop) as part of a process in which an organism seeks to survive,
grow and flourish within different kinds of situations” (21-2).

I'm with you here Joe. I agree about the hyper-rational and have
noted the same in my criticisms of kennilingus and the model of
hierarchical complexity.* I've long hoped for such a theurjic
recontextualization using tarot imagery as method for 'communion' with
if not gods then at least transrational aspects of psyche. It was in
that hope that I re-entered the GD a few years back but realized it was
too locked in a metaphysical view to get anywhere so left again, this
time for good. So I'm actually interested in your generative (en)closure
along those lines, despite my healthy skepticism and doubt.

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Earlier
in the IPS OOO thread* I questioned that thoughts were non-substantial elements
instead of fully substantial suobjects in themselves. Granted we can
'think' prior to language but language certainly extends that process
per the embodied mind thesis. I also brought in the extended mind thesis
to support my speculations. Along that line I just discovered this
article over at Integral Options, "The embodied mind extended." It's nice when 'science' in some ways confirms my theoretical musings. The abstract:

"The extended mind view and the embodied-grounded view of cognition
and language are typically considered as rather independent
perspectives. In this paper we propose a possible integration of the two
views and support it proposing the idea of 'Words As social Tools'
(WAT). In this respect, we will propose that words, also due to their
social and public character, can be conceived as quasi-external devices
that extend our cognition. Moreover, words function like tools in that
they enlarge the bodily space of action thus modifying our sense of
body. To support our proposal, we review the relevant literature on
tool-use and on words as tools and report recent evidence indicating
that word use leads to an extension of space close to the body. In
addition, we outline a model of the neural processes that may underpin
bodily space extension via word use and may reflect possible effects on
cognition of the use of words as external means. We also discuss how
reconciling the two perspectives can help to overcome the limitations
they encounter if considered independently."

Continuing from this post, Case,* as is typical of many if not all GD
members, is convinced that the Secret Chiefs ruling over mankind (the
Illuminati, not doubt, and in a 'higher' plane) are providing this
knowledge of Illumination to their chosen inner circle. And that said
inner circle (jerks) are privy (i.e., have privileged access) to, and
are in direct communication with, said Secret Chiefs. (See this GD claim,
as but one example of the constant and continual wars on who talks to
the Chiefs.) I don't have to tell you the political implications of such
self-proclaimed power stemming from claims of direct, privileged access
to Reality.

* From The Open Door:

"BUILDERS OF THE ADYTUM (B.O.T.A.) is a true Mystery School; an
international, non-profit, teaching and training Order and an outer
vehicle of the Inner Spiritual Hierarchy, sometimes called the Inner
School, which guides the evolution of Man."

"A popular model for the representation of time in the brain
posits the existence of a single, central-clock. In that framework,
temporal distortions in perception are explained by contracting or
expanding time over a given interval. We here present evidence for an
alternative account, one which proposes multiple independent
timelines coexisting within the brain."

In an IPS thread on generative (en)closures in this post Balder asks Joe this question:

"I do not question the reality of these states of consciousness, having
experienced at least some of them in my own contemplative exploration,
but one traditional belief which we have been questioning here is
whether these states give us 'privileged access' to reality or to the
center of being(s). Such is the teaching of many mystical schools,
including some in which I have practiced, but the concept of direct
access to the entirety of reality itself is what has been criticized
more recently as the 'philosophy of consciousness' or the 'metaphysics
of presence.'"

Friday, May 24, 2013

Robert Reich lays out the facts, how Democrats just love that Wall Street jism too. Obviously, since it's all over their face for all to see and they don't care. Citigroup drafted a bill which ended up word-for-word in 70 lines out of 85. A bill which continues to denude what little financial reform has previously passed, and allows the same type of derivative trading that caused the recent crises. And quite a few Democrats voted for it. He lists all the Democrats that were either in Citigroup before or after serving in Congress or the Administration.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Thanks to Senator Sanders for linking me to this article on Denmark, and how the US can learn from them. No one there is allowed to be poor. No one. All are entitled to free health care, free college, subsidized child care and much more. Compare with the US where 46 million live in poverty, female life expectancy is declining and 45,000 die each year due to not having access to healthcare. Yes, Denmark has the highest taxes in the world, but they've decided that having a society rated as one of the world's happiest is worth the investment. And not surprisingly, they are far more democratic than the US too. See the article for the details and much more. I say we have a lot to learn here.

It's been gospel that if one does not accept Jesus Christ as their savior then they ain't going to heaven, period. Not so says the the new Pope. "He declared that everyone was redeemed through Jesus, including atheists." Being an atheist I'm sure I'm not going to heaven anyway, nor is anyone else. But it's nice to know that the Pope is not condemning me to hell just because I don't believe. And that I can still get into heaven by doing good works, regardless of my (lack of) belief. This is certainly a step in the right direction away from ethnocentric in-out group love-hate so typical of regressive Christianity. The more I hear about Francis the more I like him.

Bottom line: corporate taxes, including payroll taxes, has gone from 32% in 1950 to 17% today. This means that the individual tax burden has risen to 61% of total federal revenue, up 45% from 1950. Funny how the regressives want to go back to the 50s in terms of 'family values' but not in terms of taxes, when something resembling the American dream was still possible.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Time and again the Justice Dept. has claimed that they could not criminally prosecute big banks for obviously criminal deeds that have had a huge, negative impact on the economy, like the crises of '08. There have been several other financial crimes since them with the same excuse, that if criminally prosecuted it would further negatively impact the economy because these institutions were too big. Well now it comes out that the Justice Dept. is not basing this speculation on any evidence whatsoever. As in, none, zip, zero, nada.

See Taibbi's article for the specific details. Bottom line is that Wall Street lobbyists, with the help of Republicans and Democrats alike, have passed legislation to continue to allow the exact same kind of activity that caused the meltdown of '08 and provide exactly the same kind of immunity in the form of bailouts.This is fucking criminal to the highest degree.

He does it again, nailing the greedy bastards while the rest of us have to deal with cuts for social services because there's not enough $ in the till. Corps get incredible tax breaks and then shelter their profits overseas so they won't have to pay their fair share in taxes. He makes a good point that this is because these corps bear no allegiance to any country but only to the almighty dollar. So do they give a shit if this cause the tax burden to be shifted to the rest of us? Not. Check out his piece for some specifics. And get busy to your representatives to fight this crime against humanity.

As Americans well know, a devastating tornado ripped through Oklahoma recently killing several and causing untold damage. Let the record show that the 2 Senators from OK have consistently opposed federal disaster relief except when it comes to OK. Another example of regressive ethnic take care of your own kind and to hell with anyone else, who need to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps or die.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Continuing from this post, any model or system (mathematical or otherwise) posits non-provable
axioms and goes from there. And whatever the axioms one can find logical
and consistent conclusions arising therefrom, even if such axioms
contradict another system's axioms. So one problem is in assuming that
the system's axioms are the objective in itself universal givens instead
of creations of the system. Another is that the insatiable desire to
have that one theory of everything that subsumes all the others under
its 'more correct' auspices. I'm granting that indeed we can make
progress, evolve if you will, but that our current 'highest'
understanding is that there are multiple models of equal 'altitude' that
'work' as viable and productive tools. And that no one of them can
fulfill the ultimate meta function of stepping outside The Real to see
the Really Real. The name for that phenomenon is assholon.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Here's another recent article on GOP Christianity, founded on a messianic Calvinism. It's tenets are: "The Bible is infallible; the 'law' is driven by the Ten Commandments,
rather than the teachings of Jesus; humans are totally depraved; and God
has predestined who will be saved." It fomented the culture wars by railing against marriage equality, abortion, evolution, the separation of church and state, but most importantly for capitalism. The author also brings in Weber's seminal work on this, and how financial success determined one's heavenly worth. Hence as already mentioned the by-product being if you're poor it's because you're of the Devil and are getting your just desserts. And all in all in this author's mind (and mine), not at all akin to the teaching of Jesus who gave Christianity its name. For Christ sake.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

"There is no supernatural causation of any kind, nor any genuinely
mystical experiences (e.g. astrology and merging with the totality of
things) so anything that posits deep meanings, supernatural causes,
purposes, and so on ought to be treated with disdain and ignored.
Nonetheless, people do have 'mystical experiences.' They just aren’t
caused in the way they suppose and are perfectly ordinary
natural/neurological events (the oneness with everything that certain
epileptics describe after a seizure resulting from all their neurons
more or less firing at once). Buddhist meditation is therefore a good psycho-neurological therapy."

This says quite a lot. Senate minority leader McConnell has often been highly critical of the Obama administration on just about every issue, often to the same degree of rabid paranoia of others in his party. So when he defends the investigation into AP records over national security leaks, and does not take an opportunity to attack Obama on this being a scandal, something is either very wrong with McConnell or there is a lot more truth to the Justice Dept's case here than meets they jaded eye of regressive wingnuts and sincere progressives alike.

The last 2 posts on faux spiritual values remind me of how religion in general, including Christianity, has undergone a drastic transformation in the US under the socio-economic system of capitalism. We see the likes of this in the integral movement explored in these IPS threads: "LOHAS and the indigo dollar" and "Integral global capitalism." It has also come to more mainstream religions like Christianity as well in the form of prosperity programming. Hence we have such premises and lines of rationalization like this: We create our own realities. Therefore if your life sucks it's your own damned fault and the fault lies only with you. If you're poor you deserve it. Same for if you're rich. God rewards those that help themselves and punishes those that slack off. Which is of course exactly the kind of 'reasoning' (rationalization) behind regressives in the US Congress. This article goes into how this happened in Christianity. And this one on religion and the market. See all the above articles for detailed analysis of how these greedy, selfish, hateful and 'spiritual' rationalizations are unconsciously grounded in the capitalist way of life.

PS: Also recall this IPS thread on positive thinking in the military. A few excerpts from the thread:

On Real Time last Friday night Maher was pissed at the IRS for unfairly singling out the Tea Party's applications for tax exempt status. To prove it he found (i.e., created) a sample form that Tea Party applicants had to complete:

Continuing a theme from the last post, Pope Francis lays out what being a good Christian means. Reminding me of the faux moralists in the GOP he said: "We cannot become starched Christians, too polite, who speak of
theology calmly over tea. We have to become courageous Christians and
seek out those (who need help most)." Hurray for him. Also reminiscent of regressive hypocrisy, he goes on:

"If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy
and people say 'what are we going to do?' But if people die of hunger,
have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that's nothing. This
is our crisis today. A Church that is poor and for the poor has to
fight this mentality."

Bravo! Now if only those supposed Christians in Congress could get with his program. I know, not likely.

Krugman has an extended piece in the NY Review of Books on the topic. He reviews 3 books to make his case on the failed austerity policy. Much of that policy was based on a paper by Reinhart and Rogoff, in which they stated that when debt exceeds 90 of GDP economies fail. It turned out that there was a significant coding error in the paper as well as flawed analysis. Nonetheless it fed into the austerity ideology so even after the error was discovered fanatics refused to see the facts and continue to this day to plunge headlong into disastrous policy. And never mind that several analysts including Krugman saw problems with the paper from the start, also ignored.

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Recall back in '04 Ray Harris responded to McIntosh's integral world government. McIntosh replied here, and Harris countered here. From the last source:

"The problem with such statements as 'transcend and include' is that
they can easily become platitudes. They sound meaningful but remain
meaningless until we detail what exactly should be transcended and what
should be included. Steve, I know you have included a list of the
'enduring' elements of each stage. But unfortunately this is where the
real problem begins. I simply don't agree that they are 'enduring' at
all. Interesting isn't it? The things you think should be included I
think should be transcended."

The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) consists of one United States
Senator and seventy five members of the United States House of
Representatives, and is the largest caucus within the House Democratic
Caucus. Established in 1991, the CPC reflects the diversity and
strength of the American people and seeks to give voice to the needs and
aspirations of all Americans and to build a more just and humane
society.

It starts around 53:00 in this video. This week we had regressives fuming that Benghazi is the biggest scandal in history. Really? We had Nixon running a burglary ring out of the White House. Reagan traded arms with terrorists. Bush had Powell lie to the UN to start a war. And Benghazi? Some talking points that the CIA gave to the State Department to protect national security. Oh yes, that's worse than slavery, Japanese internment, lying about WMD and banks still perpetuating financial crimes of stupendous proportions. If you're really that crazy about Benghazi then "your hard on for Obama has lasted for more than four hours and you need to call a doctor." I'd add call a psychiatrist while you're at it; you need some serious anti-psychotic medication.

Friday, May 17, 2013

While I'm all for applying integral theory to socio-political activism,
heretofore sorely neglected and urgently needed, I'm still a bit leery. I
listened to the 1st 6 minutes of their video intro and Phipps was past
editor of EnlightenNext, Cohen's magazine. And recall McIntosh's whole-hearted endorsement of Cohen's book on evolution. So from both Phipps and McIntosh
I get a hyper altitude sickness feeling, much like we discussed in this thread. On top of that Mackey from Whole Foods and conscious capitalism are involved, so recall this thread. That's why I'm more apt to promote the likes of Rifkin for implementing integral socio-economics, as well as Arnsperger.

And recall this IPS thread on religion and politics, making a case for the developmental trajectory of religion. Following is the introductory paragraph. See the entire thread for more elucidation.

In modern democracy we must maintain the separation of church and state,
which is of course the rallying cry of atheists everywhere. And for
good cause, since fundamental religion would remove the democratic ideal
and reinstate a theocracy based not on equality but divine right ruled
by a religious caste. On the other hand we've thrown out the baby with
the bathwater altogether and consequently our political economy is
lacking in the kinds of basic human decency necessary to overcome the
inhuman forms of treatment endemic to what we're seeing expressed in
budget proposals all across the US; the rich get richer and more
powerful which the middle class and the poor bear the brunt of
ever-shrinking leftover pie crumbs. To reinject human value back into
politics then religion must obviously be of a different kind, we might
even say of a postmetaphysical kind, that is bereft of all those things
we have grown beyond but still retains our connection with something
larger that instills within us humane values toward each other.

Continuing from the last post, this prior post on Edwards contains some useful context. Some excerpts:

"In chapter 7.5 [of Edwards's dissertation] he discusses 4 types of
holon relations: intra, inter, systemic and intersystemic. Intra shows
the dynamics of a single holon (which could be an individual or a
group). Inter shows how holons relate. Systemic shows the relationship
between holons and the holarchy in which they are embedded.
Intersystemic shows relationships between holarchies. Intra is typical
of developmentalists. Inter is used by communication and mediation
focuses, generally pomo. Systemic is where dynamic systems come in. And
intersystemic shows relationships of the first 3."

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Bryant has a post on God and mytho-poetic thought.
Therein he just cannot grok how the likes Caputo can see religion as
poetic interpretation because the vast majority of folks interpret the
myths literally. As much as I'm sick of the over-emphasis on levels in
kennilingus, aka altitude sickness,
Bryant really needs a healthy dose of developmental psychology here.
And the thing is, it fits right in with his own mereology of assemblages
of increasingly complex scale.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

An update on my blog. I'm starting to get linked to from Current TV, which is interesting as they've been bought by Al Jareeza. However AJ has yet to take over, apparently coming in June. Another recent site linking to my blog is VK,
a Russian social network. I guess my progressive politics, which
includes healthy criticism of my government, is getting some audience
not just outside the integral bubble but outside the US bubble as well.

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Last Thursday Jon Stewart reported that a U of MD study showed that there were 54 attacks on diplomatic targets during the Bush years with 13 American deaths. Yet there was nary a peep out of the same regressives that are now going apeshit over Benghazi, as there were only 3 congressional hearings. So O'Reilly remarks that "many" of those were during the Iraq war. And that Stewart got his "facts" from Daily Kos and Media Matters, as if that somehow erases their veracity. Stewart points out that 8 of those attacks happened during the Iraq was. That is many? So what about the other 46? Bill O doesn't respond to that. And Stewart got the info directly from the U of MD website. Once again proving that Fox is faux with their fact checks, or faux checks. And that they refuse to answer real, substantive questions, instead preferring ad hominem attacks based on ideology. I know, big surprise.

Continuing from the last post, from Lakoff & Johnson's Philosophy
in the Flesh:

"The phenomenological person, who through introspection alone can discover
everything there is to know about the nature of mind and experience, is a
fiction. Although we can have a theory of a vast, rapidly and automatically
operating cognitive unconscious, we have no direct conscious access to its
operation and therefore to most of our thought" (5).

Monday, May 13, 2013

Bryant's last 2 blog posts remind me of prior discussions with
kela on privileged access. In this
one:

"Phenomenology is constitutively unable to think the real
of the body.... While phenomenology can certainly describe how we
experience our bodies, it never manages to get at the
fundamental opacity of body and affect. The body,
as real, is not something given to
consciousness or lived experience. Put
differently, our bodies are something we never experience.
At most, we experience the effects of our bodies,
never our bodies as such."

In this clip Stewart asks a very simple question in response to regressive hysteria: "What did the President do?" One regressive demagogue said he sacrificed American lives for politics. Regressive media is furious that the 'media' is not outraged by this story. Thing is, they always frame it as "if it was indeed the case," if their paranoid delusions were true, then it is truly an outrage. Stewart shows example after example of the "what if." But what they're not seeing is that it's their delusions preying on their sanity, because there is no evidence that it is indeed the case. These freaks create a narrative to fit their hatred sans any semblance of fact or evidence. Stewart quips: "Yes, if. And if dingleberries were diamonds I could open a Kaye jewelers in my pants."

Sunday, May 12, 2013

"As the concept of system now stands, though it is embedded in a general
theory ('general system theory'), it does not constitute a paradigmatic
principle; rather, the principle invoked is that of holism, which seeks
explanation at the level of the totality, in opposition to the
reductionist paradigm that seeks explanation at the level of elementary
components. As I shall demonstrate, however, this 'holism' arises from
the same simplifying principle as the reductionism to which it is
opposed (that is, a simplification of, and reduction to, the whole)"
(1).

It's come to be a given that regressive ideological fixation will not budge in the face of obvious facts. And no, progressives do not fall prey to this to anywhere near the same degree as regressives, as you'll recall from this scientific study. So Maddow runs down a litany of issues whereby they flail on despite evidence refuting their paranoid fantasies. For one, the stock market recently hit an all-time high, going over 15,000. And yet we have the head in the sand and up their ass regressives, on the very same day as this new high, fuming that socialist Obama is wrecking the stock market and causing the rich to unload their stocks. Yes, on the same day.

“This virtual form of time, involving the idea of absolute simultaneity,
would seem to violate the laws of relativity. In relativistic physics two
events cease to be simultaneous the moment they become separated in space, the
dislocation in time becoming all the more evident the larger the separating
distance....[but] in virtual space there are no metric distances, only
ordinal distances that join rather than separate events.... Unlike a
transcendent heaven inhabited by pure beings without becoming
(unchanging essences or laws with a permanent identity) the virtual needs to be
populated exclusively by pure becomings without being. Unlike actual
becomings which have at most an intensive form of temporality (bundles of
sequential processes occurring in parallel) a pure becoming must be
characterized by a parallelism without any trace of sequentiality, or even
directionality. Deleuze finds inspiration for this conception of time in
phase transitions, or more exactly, in the critical events defining unactualized
transitions. When seen as a pure becoming, a critical point of of temperature
of 0 degrees C, for example, marks neither a melting nor a freezing of water,
both of which are actual becomings...occurring as the critical threshold is
crossed in a definite direction. A pure becoming, on the other hand, would
involve both directions at once, a melting-freezing event which never actually
occurs, but is 'always forthcoming and already past.'”

Wednesday, May 8, 2013

Following are some of my intuitive Musings from an IPS thread on the Cube of Space.

Recent posts and thoughts led to my Musing that the center of the Cube
is not The World. Rather the center is more akin to a recontextualized
Ain, as in the Veil(s) of the Negative, corresponding to that virtual,
core excess. Whereas the Cube as a whole (holon of anything actual)
is The World. This is consistent with Saturn and material embodiment in
the number 4. I’m seeing the center as more a Black
Hole in that sense of the virtual.

I was re-reading this Torbert thread today and this stuck out for me, given recent ruminations on time, axes and the virtual:

""A third dimension of time can again be imagined as orthogonal (the Z
axis) to the plane defined by chronological time (X axis) and eternity
(Y axis). The three-dimensional 'volume' of time can be imagined as
holding all possibilities, all the potentialities of the future and the
still-hidden meanings of the past, some of which emerge into the present
(become act-ualized) and then pass into linear, historical time,
through a translation process that quantum physics now describes as a
'quantum collapse.'"

"In which one's primary path is one's inner guidance, what George
Fox, founder of the Quakers, called one's 'inner teacher,' and what
Christians have often referred to as the 'guidance of the Holy Spirit.'
Its emphasis lies on the relationship aspect of the Ultimate
Mystery. This way may not lead to being embedded in a particular wisdom
tradition (without eliminating this possibility), but instead to taking
on, in a mature and disciplined way, differing teachers, practices and
service roles throughout one's lifetime, under the guidance of the
Spirit.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

A couple quips from the Hampson summary, all
topics explored in depth in this blog and IPS Forum. Unfortunately even Hampson is
caught up in the marginalizing tendencies of academia to even notice.

"In attempting to transcend postmodernism, Wilberian integral theory
appears not to sufficiently include its contributions. AQAL's current
theoretic status of the Green vMeme and its relationship to post-Green
conceptualisations is substantively problematic."

"The reflexive enactment of such [pomo] modalities may consequently
alter the conceptual template—the very fabric—upon which integral theory
is based."

"Research could be undertaken regarding the relationship of integral
theory to Lakoff and Johnson's work on conceptual metaphor and embodied
philosophy."

"Notions of construction and deconstruction as necessary adversaries
can appropriately be seen to stem from an either/or mindset. Thinking
dialectically, their relationship can fruitfully be rather understood as
complexly interpenetrating."

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Colbert, mock pretending to be a gun advocate, lays out their nonsense, as there are "no coherent arguments" in support. "Fine," he says, "then what about incoherent arguments." Like background checks will lead to a registry. Oh yeah, the recent legislation specifically makes it a crime to do so. It's a symptom of what he calls "truthiness," completely ignoring the facts to confirm your irrational biases. (Reminds me of Fox and Friends in the last post.) So the regressives engage in NRA-vana, their idyllic paradise of the freedom to kill whatever and whomever they choose to preserve their...freedom?

Saturday, May 4, 2013

Bhaskar and/or OOO transcendentally deducing what is real gets me back to one of my first questions in the OOO thread.
OOO is anti-correlationism, yet this speculative realist premise or
transcendental deduction is itself an anthropocentric and correlationist
translation, or kosmic address as it were, of what reality is like.
I.e., it is an existent speculating on a subsistent. Even though it
admits no direct access to verify or confirm such a speculation, it
nonetheless seeks evidence by deducing the premise from empirical,
scientific findings, i.e., after the 'facts.'

Continuing in the CR/IT IPS discussion, Balder is doing a fine job of articulating and coordinating some of our earlier
musings on subsistence and existence. Following are a few links to those
discussions, where one can also read a few posts on either side of it: 1, 2, and 3 is the Murray thread, where we came at this from a kosmic address. Balder's musings from the thread follow:

"I agree that the 'no single dog,' or 'multiple-object,' aspect of Integral Theory could
contribute to an Integral homeomorphic equivalent to 'withdrawal.' But
it's a subtle question, because the 'no single dog' aspect could also
be read as an expression of correlationism and/or the epistemic
fallacy. I'm not sure I can do justice to this question in a brief
response, but here's a start. In saying the dog is different for
different observers (something CR and OOO also accept and explicitly
express), are we saying that the dog wholly is what it is for other observers, or perhaps that the dog is the sum total of what it is for multiple observers? In other words, is the being of the dog found in its appearance-for (or multiple-appearances-for)
other beings? The epistemic fallacy, according to CR and OOO, involves
identifying the being of objects with the epistemic mode(s) in which
they are accessed, i.e., in their epistemic appearance-for other
beings. Is the argument that there is no single dog an argument that
the dog's being is found entirely in its multiple appearances-for?

Friday, May 3, 2013

An IPS thread was started on one of Zizek's talks on Buddhism. So far most opinion, including my own, is that it's pretty much useless unless you've imbibed the Kool-Aid. I prefer this article:

"While I’m sympathetic to many of Žižek’s criticisms and aims, I feel
that 1) his sloppiness in appropriating Buddhist thought and 2) his
narrow ideological bent make him difficult to take too seriously.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

This Daily Kos blog hits it out of the park on idiotic criticism of Obama supposedly being responsible for regressive behavior.

" President Obama can not force the GOP to stop destroying their own
party and along with it America's economy. He can't force them to stop
clinging to bad ideas that are proven to fail. Obama is not Ceaser Milan. He can't make the GOP stop shitting on
the floor and rolling in it. He can't make the GOP stop biting people
they have always hated. The GOP is a bad dog that refuses to be taught
new tricks. Pretending that the President has the power to make the GOP
stop embracing the massively unpopular ideas that cost them the last
Presidential election is a half-assed attempt to hold Obama accountable
for Republicans bad behavior instead of holding Republicans accountable for their own bad behavior. Any journalist who insists otherwise is full of it. He's the President of the United States. He is not the Asshole Whisperer."

theurj: No complaints with the addendum. It's just my
questions above that remain unanswered.

Balder: Someone at my work asked me about the current debate between IT and
CR, and what the main disagreement was about (whether, for instance, Bhaskar
was trying to "prove" the existence of being apart from the
altitudes). This was part of my response, which I think is relevant to
some of the points made in Wilber's recent addendum:

I think Bhaskar's main argument is that we have to presuppose the existence
of objects or entities which exist independently of our knowing of them, in
order to make sense of scientific or other forms of inquiry and activity.
Bhaskar differentiates between the real, the actual, and the empirical, where
the "real" is the irreducibility of objects to our knowledge of or
about them; the "actual" is the events that are occurring at any
given time (observed by us or not); and the "empirical" is our
experience and interpretation of said events.

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

I may have posted this before but it's an oldie but goodie, altitude sickness by Mark Edwards. Quote:

"One assumption for developing an integral metastudies approach to big
picture research is that there are multiple lenses that have been used
to develop those overarching schemas. All of these lenses need to be
included in a comprehensive view of complex social realities. One of
the most enduring of these lenses is the altitude lens. This lens looks
at temporal complexity through the discourse of stage-based
development.

Altitude lenses have been a common element of big pictures for many
thousands of years. They typically map out some set of qualitatively
different stages of growth and they propose that the changing nature of
complex processes can be understood as a series of unfolding stage
potentials. Altitude lenses come in a variety of forms, soft, hard,
spiritual, cognitive, interpersonal, individual and collective but they
all share this element of a vertical shift from one level to another.
Wilber's levels, Spiral Dynamics colour stages, Fowler's stages of
faith, Piaget's cognitive stages, all these are examples of the
application of the altitude lens to various domains.

As with all lenses the altitude lens is subject to different kinds of
truncations and reductionisms. I call these reductionisms the
varieties of altitude sickness and, in a spirit of playful
finger-pointing, I will briefly describe a few of these here: